Mumbai’s ‘modern’ women

If there is such a thing as ‘modernity’ it is probably best noticed when it is compared to or in conflict with the ‘traditional’. In Mumbai the classic example of this conflict would be the latest German car stuck in traffic because a cow is crossing the road (at its own pace of course). Various anecdotes like these can be told about India and the changes it is going through, however there are also less funny sides to the shift between ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’. It’s especially in the lives of Mumbai’s (young) women that it becomes painstakingly clear that this shift is not one without struggles.

Mumbai, as India’s financial capital, is an attractive place if you’re young, ambitious and eager to start working and earning. Young graduates move from all over India to this city. They can earn a substantial amount of money, especially if staying in house with a relative and live a rather care-free ‘modern’ life. For women however, I’ve noticed that this is something that is achieved through a continuous struggle with the family and the city.

Unfortunately, a large part of society does not judge the young professional women of Mumbai by the university degree they hold or the job that they do, but simply by the fact whether they’re married or not. For Indian parents, the single most important fact seems to whether their daughter is married or not (statistically this seems rather strange, given the fact that there are more men then women in India). For a 20-30 year old corporate employee in Mumbai, this must feel rather frustrating, knowing that no matter how good you did in school, how hard you’re working now and how much money you’re making, your parents are constantly asking you to get married. Of course, getting married for a woman would either mean quitting her job and becoming a housewife, or continuing working but getting up an hour earlier to prepare food in the morning and repeating the same task in the evening after coming home from the office.

This ‘traditional’ idea that women are not supposed to work outside the house is not just something in the heads and customs of people, it’s reflected in the city’s infrastructure as well. All over this city there are public pay-per-use bathrooms with free urinals for men. These can be found at all train stations and popular public places such as beaches, markets etc.. Women are not allowed to pee for free at these places, they are required to pay 2-3 Rs. per time. Especially for street vendors at the station this is a high amount of money for a tinkle. Other women prefer not using the public toilets, because they’re not clean or men are also frequenting them. This results in the fact that many of the women of Mumbai are chronically suffering from urinary tract infections caused by holding their urine too long or not drinking enough water (done on purpose to prevent the peeing urge).

When activists from the ‘Right to Pee’ campaign demanded free public urinals for women, they were simply brushed off by the city planners saying that if they would come up with space the city would build these urinals. Of course, these city officials knew that finding space in Mumbai was going to be a daunting task for the women. So, the Right to Pee campaign has decided that public urinals should be at least planned for in the future plans of Mumbai.

Mumbai has a rather archaic form of city planning; development plans are made every 20 years, the last plan was made in 1982. It was however only ratified in 1994, so the new one development plan should be ready by 2014. At this moment every NGO, action group and developer in town is of course trying to influence the planning process and so are my friends at the Right to Pee campaign. Yesterday the people behind this movement had a meeting with one of the city’s leading urban planner. She made it quite clear to all attendants that the scramble around the next development plan will not only be a fight to get the right to free public urinals for women, but it will also entail the right for separate dressing rooms in public offices, daycare centres and all the other facilities that can enable Mumbai’s women to equally take part in the professional working life.

Suddenly the Right to Pee campaign’s struggle appears to be about more than just the right to urinate for free like men, it’s about women having the choice and facilities to decide themselves whether they want to work or stay at home.

Almost on my way to Mumbai

So next week I will be on my way to Mumbai, that is if the dear people at the Indian Embassy are so kind to return my passport back on time with a visa stamp. In the meanwhile I’m preparing myself, looking for apartments and watching youtube movies.

 

Health

One of the main reasons why lack of sanitation is such a big problem, are of course the health implications that lack of appropriate sanitation has. It is estimated that 2.2 million people die of diarrhoeal diseases annually, of which children form the vast majority. These numbers, although often repeated, are quickly forgotten as all humanitarian crises seem to be in competition with each other to gain attention and funds for their cause.

I must say, I am no different. Although I am well aware of the health implications of poor sanitation and the effects in can have on people’s lives and livelihoods, I am not directly confronted by these conditions (yet), so these thoughts are absent from my mind most of the time that I’m thinking on the subject. Sanitation detached from its day-to-day implications becomes a technical issue; a choice between different types of toilet technologies, management models and education campaigns.

My visit to the vaccination centre in my university town yesterday helped me to wake up again.  Although I already have had most of the vaccines required to visit India, my trip is of a different kind of nature than that of most tourists. The nurse discussed with me the idea of taking along various doses of antibiotics in case of treatment and also the possibility of taking a sort of vaccine against cholera, which also seems to be effective against traveller’s diarrhoea.

This medical visit really got me thinking. In my case I can take preventive medicines, carry alcohol gel around to disinfect my hands, have some doses of antibiotics at hand if I get ill, I can also always choose the exit strategy and leave my research site and go to a hospital for treatment or to a hotel to recover for some days. It might cost a bit, but I’m confident I’ll able to carry these expenses. But what if you can’t afford all of that? How do you deal with diarrhoea in the middle of the night if the nearest public toilet is a 15 minute walk away? What if you can’t afford medicines to treat your children? I must admit that these thoughts are more disturbing and tend to hang around my mind a bit longer than the statistics mentioned above.

Until my research is under way I guess, I’ll never really know how one copes without the comfort of a toilet in an unhygienic environment. So what does one do nowadays when (s)he is left clueless? That right, you turn to youtube! Check out the video below by Video Volunteers’ India Unheard. On their youtube page, you’ll also get access to many more of the fantastic videos that these people have made.